Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator to pay visit to Johns Hopkins

February 5, 2016

Hours before the kickoff of the biannual HopHacks hackathon on Friday, organizers will welcome two members of the Silicon Valley tech accelerator Y Combinator, which has served as an incubator and fundraiser for tech giants such as DropBox, Airbnb, and Reddit.

Y Combinator partner Dalton Caldwell and hardware specialist Luke Iseman will host a talk, followed by a Q and A session, at 5:30 p.m. at Hodson Hall. The speakers will also hold office hours and meet with students to discuss startup ideas before their scheduled talk.

Caldwell is the founder of the music streaming service imeem—which was acquired by MySpace in 2009—and Mixed Media Labs. Iseman cofounded the soil sensor startup Edyn and specializes in hardware development.

Event organizer Kasim Ahmad, a venture coordinator for Johns Hopkins University’s own accelerator program, FastForward, says the goal is for the speakers to impart some of the secrets of their own successes.